Dalton Chance is 15 years old and an open book. Pace Creagan,
aged 17, is fearless and feared, and to Dalton, she's
irresistible. High atop a railroad trestle that spans a dry
creek, two teenagers plan to race across the bridge against an
oncoming locomotive. At first their scheme adds excitement to
life in a small factory town during the Great Depression, then
experience awakens dangerous passions in an era of
stifled ambitions. With theatrical flourish and lyrical finesse,
Naomi Wallace delves into a world where people struggle to change
lives that bear down upon them. "… Naomi Wallace, the
thirty-eight-year-old Kentucky playwright at work here, received
a MacArthur 'genius grant' last week, and TRESTLE AT POPE LICK
CREEK, her lovely, strikingly poetic Depression-era play …
certainly illustrates what makes her deserving … the play
sometimes seems like a blend of Ingmar Bergman and Horton Foote,
with Thornton Wilder on the side … TRESTLE is set in 1936 in a in
a town so dull that the only thing young people can pit
themselves against, the only thing greater than them, is the 7:10
train with its 153-ton engine and deafening roar. So we find
Dalton and Pace, who becomes his girlfriend despite his repeated
insistence that she is not pretty, making plans to test
themselves by trying to outrun the train on a trestle a hundred
feet above a dry creek bed. Another boy from their town tried it
recently and died … By the end, the play, like that train, has
built up a full head of steam and we feel its power." -Anita
Gates, The New York Times
"… TRESTLE is an often poignant, nonlinear-narrative
coming-of-age story that's set in 1936 in a 'town outside a city,
somewhere in the United States … TRESTLE is at once charming and
haunting … you'll view it with wonder along the way." -Sam
Whitehead, Time Out
"… The honor for the most original and memorable work of this
year's 22nd Humana Festival goes to another Kentuckian, Naomi
Wallace, for her brilliant THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK … After
the two-act play ended with an erotic, gender-twisted climax,
there was a moment in the darkness when I thought: 'This must be
how it felt when people saw A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE for the very
first time.' Like Tennessee Williams's daring play, Wallace's
work introduces a new level of sexual honesty with a fresh mature
voice. TRESTLE wraps its five characters in a metaphorical drama
within a romantic and tragic mystery. It's a complicated,
interwoven play that moves back and forth in time between past
and present, with layers of meaning that overlap and build upon
each other. Despite its depth of symbolism and clear political
message, the play is neither stuffy nor strident. A bright ripple
of humor funs through Wallace's play about two sexually charged
young people who consider a game of chicken with an oncoming
train. Wallace's keen psychological ins evoke compassion for
her characters. Tears are shed and not only over the pathos of
the play … The actors stir the emotions with the tender way they
expose the fragility and indomitable beauty of the human spirit,
as revealed through Wallace's words … If Wallace's plays were a
visual art, ONE FLEA SPARE would be a baroque oil painting, while
THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK would be a 1930s American
photograph with contrasting lights and shadows and its direct,
unsentimental and uncensored gaze into the lives of the working
class." -Judith Egerton, Courier-Journal, Louisville
- Used Book in Good Condition.